Study determines global burden of pancreatic diseases

Auckland study determines global burden of pancreatic diseases
Media Release - University of Auckland - 30 June 2016

An Auckland-based study on the global incidence and mortality of diseases of the pancreas has revealed that acute pancreatitis is the most common of these diseases, while pancreatic cancer is the most lethal.

The study, just published in leading medical journal, The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, was led by Dr Max Petrov from the Department of Surgery at the University of Auckland.

It’s the first time a study has systematically explored variations in the epidemiology of the most common pancreatic diseases worldwide.

“The incidence and mortality of these diseases of the pancreas were determined using data from nearly 300 million individuals from all over the world included in 48 high quality population-based cohort studies,” says Dr Petrov.

“The global incidence of acute pancreatitis in the general population was nearly double that of chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer combined,” he says. “Global mortality from pancreatic cancer was nearly four times greater than that from acute and chronic pancreatitis combined.”

The study also found that men have a significantly higher incidence of chronic pancreatitis, but not pancreatic cancer or acute pancreatitis.

Dr Petrov and his team found that the burden of these three pancreatic diseases was not equal across the globe.

A sub-group analysis based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) regions showed that the incidence of both pancreatic cancer and acute pancreatitis, and mortality from pancreatic cancer, were significantly higher in the American region, than in Europe or the Western Pacific.

The incidence of chronic pancreatitis was significantly higher in Europe than in the American region, while mortality from pancreatic cancer was lowest in the Southeast Asian region.

“Despite a number of narrative reviews of the epidemiology of pancreatic diseases, all the earlier reviews combined data indiscriminately from studies conducted in the general population and special cohorts or insurance databases or case-control studies, introducing selection and sampling biases,” says Dr Petrov.

“The robust and accurate epidemiological estimates reported in this study will inform future high-quality studies in diseases of the pancreas, such as those being devised by the Auckland group COSMOS (Clinical and epidemiOlogical inveStigations in Metabolism, nutritiOn, and pancreatic diseaseS), hosted at the University’s School of Medicine,” he says.

"What is also exciting is that COSMOS group provides real opportunities to be involved in a truly world-class clinical and epidemiological research for senior postgraduate students and undergraduate students,” says Dr Petrov. “For example, the first author on the Lancet paper is Amy Xiao, a fifth year medical student at the University. Not a bad start to a career in medicine".

COSMOS is supported in part by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (via a career development award to Dr Petrov).

ENDS

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